Tag: Sacramento Police Department

concern about SacPD enforcement against bicyclists and walkers

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Update/correction: The grant was apparently approved by city council and awarded by OTS, so the program is in effect. Transportation and equity advocates are recommending that the city council advise city manager and police that the bicyclist and walker enforcement portions of the project not be carried out, and funds diverted to more effective uses.

In an April 14, 2025 SacBee article by Ariane Lange, she expressed concern about an upcoming Sacramento Police Department program to enforce and educate about dangerous roadway behaviors: Sacramento police will ticket cyclists and pedestrians with safety grant money. I had noted this grant earlier, and figured it was not focused on enforcement against bicyclists and walkers, but concern by Lange and the local transportation and equity organizations now has me concerned.

The the grant application text:

“Similar to the “Know Your Limit” program is the “Wait for the Walk” campaign. The activities include informal contact with citizens and enforcement operations where officers saturate high-density intersections, educate pedestrians about the dangers of jaywalking, and reinforce safe pedestrian habits. The message we spread is that pedestrian-related collisions can be avoided, and we should always use crosswalks and sidewalks and always wait for the walk signals. Pedestrians should stay off their phones and pay close attention to approaching traffic when crossing streets.”

Though this is not the major part of the grant, it is concerning. Law enforcement, including but not limited to SacPD, knee-jerk blames crashes involving bicyclists and walkers hit by motor vehicle drivers as the fault of the bicyclist or walker. Even when the driver is drunk or high, it is often still blamed on the victim. This world view is so deeply embedded in law enforcement thinking that most officers never overcome it. OTS (California Office of Traffic Safety) grants, which use pass-through money from NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), have often been used as stings against bicyclists and particularly walkers, targeting and ticketed them for behavior that may be against the law but does not endanger anyone. There is no guarantee that this grant will not be used in the same way.

The text uses the term ‘jaywalking’, which is a throughly repudiated term in the transportation advocacy community, indicating a deep-seated bias against people walking. Though crossing the street outside a crosswalk is still illegal in California, it is not an citable offense unless the walker interferes with traffic or otherwise endangers other people. The reason this law was passed is that police in Los Angeles, as well as other place, were targeting people crossing the street, for no other reason than they were people of color. Law enforcement bias shows up so often that the legislature spends a lot of time trying to improve law enforcement behavior, often with insufficient impact.

Common knowledge among transportation advocates, but apparently unknown among law enforcement, is that it is safer to cross the street between intersections because there are only one or two directions of motor vehicle traffic to pay attention to, whereas at intersections, there are sixteen different directions and possible threats to people walking. Certainly, ‘pedestrian related collisions’ can be avoided, but it is by controlling driver behavior and redesigning streets, not by enforcing against or ‘educating’ people walking.

Lastly, I’ll note that the bulk of the grant is towards overtime for law enforcement training, which should be happening under the regular (bloated) police department budget, not with grant money.

Apparently there is no city council meeting this week (today, April 15), so I don’t know when approval of the grant application will be on council agenda. The council should send this back to PD for a re-write that focuses solely on dangerous driver behavior, with automated enforcement, not with in-person enforcement which is frequently biases and frequently leads to escalation and harm to the person bicycling and walking.

21950 and Vision Zero

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

California Vehicle Code 21950, failure to yield to pedestrians, is in my opinion the most important violation as it applies to implementing Vision Zero in Sacramento. The Vision Zero Sacramento Action Plan (draft) says “Launch high-visibility enforcement campaigns against speeding, failure to yield to pedestrians, distracted driving, and impaired driving. Campaigns will focus on HIN corridors.” The state code says:

21950.
  (a) The driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
(b) This section does not relieve a pedestrian from the duty of using due care for his or her safety. No pedestrian may suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close as to constitute an immediate hazard. No pedestrian may unnecessarily stop or delay traffic while in a marked or unmarked crosswalk.
(c) The driver of a vehicle approaching a pedestrian within any marked or unmarked crosswalk shall exercise all due care and shall reduce the speed of the vehicle or take any other action relating to the operation of the vehicle as necessary to safeguard the safety of the pedestrian.
(d) Subdivision (b) does not relieve a driver of a vehicle from the duty of exercising due care for the safety of any pedestrian within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.

VEHICLE CODE – VEH, DIVISION 11. RULES OF THE ROAD,CHAPTER 5. Pedestrians’ Rights and Duties; http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=VEH&sectionNum=21950; retrieved 2018-12-15

So, how is the Sacramento Police Department doing on enforcing this code against drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk? Well, from the ‘Sacramento Police Vehicle Stop Data’ (http://data.cityofsacramento.org/datasets/sacramento-police-vehicle-stop-data) of the last two years, there were 101 violations of 21950 recorded, out of 61,151 violations. This is 0.17 percent, or, other violations were 582 times more common.

Anyone spending more than 10 minutes standing on the corner of any busy pedestrian intersection could count a hundred violations of this law. I know this because I do it. It is part of my job and it is also part of my advocacy. In two years the police only wrote 105 citations? I will also add that I have seen Sacramento Police Department officers in motor vehicles violating this very code hundreds of times, on myself and on others. Even the bicycle mounted officers are frequent violators. I will say that officers have yielded to me in the crosswalk, but it is much more common that they don’t. I’m not saying that they are trying to run me down, rather than they don’t wish to be slowed or inconvenienced, and so will cross through the crosswalk when I’m in it. They are, in this sense, just like other drivers.

So what is this disconnect between what is important and what officers do? I’m going to be blunt here. The police not partners in achieving Vision Zero, in fact they are the main impediment to Vision Zero. If they persist in their windshield perspective that pedestrians are the problems and drivers don’t mean to cause harm, pedestrians will continue to die, and drivers will continue to not face consequences for their violations, for their assaults, for their murders.

If you wish to reply that we all need to work together, and consider perspectives, well, please present evidence that this has worked in the part, or some construct that says it will work in the future. I’m not seeing it. In case you think I am picking on Sac PD, things are actually worse in other jurisdictions, but since this is where I live and observe the issue every day, it is the place I focus on.

By the way, thank you Don Kostelec @KostelecPlan for getting me fired up about all the ways in which our entire system is biased against pedestrians, and that those people whose job it is to consider and act on safety are mostly only concerned about drivers and traffic flow. I encourage you to follow his ‘The Twelve Days of Safety Myths‘ series.